SITE Helps Pike Countian Tenia Johnson Maintain Recovery and Step Onto Career Path in the Recovery Field
Six years after achieving sobriety, Tenia Johnson is in a good place both personally and professionally. Still, she isn’t taking things for granted. It’s day to day, and it’s a process she’s maintaining.
Tenia Johnson marked six years of sobriety in March 2022, and is using her experience in overcoming addiction to help others.
“I do my best and work as hard as I can,” says Johnson from her home office in Pike County, Ky. “I stay straight, and I didn’t use today. Six years into it, I can say that I didn’t use today.”
By her own account, six years ago Johnson was in free fall into an opioid addiction, and even a few more weeks of using could have been fatal.
“I got to the point that I was an IV user, and it was bad, very bad,” she recalls. “Just that feeling every morning when I woke up, all I was going to do was chase money, chase dope, and that was my every day. And if it took me until midnight to get dope, I did it, and four hours later I was doing it again.”
Johnson says she was at an inflection point in her life, having burned bridges with her family. Her girlfriend was the only person remaining who could offer support. And even that relationship wouldn’t have lasted, Johnson adds, had she not finally decided to seek help for her addiction.
“She told me, ‘I love you, but I can’t love you to death,’” Johnson says. “And that just clicked something in my head.”
Johnson checked herself into treatment for a years-long addiction, something that had happened before with numerous attempts at treatment clinics and detox centers. But this time was different, and part of that difference, she says, came in 2019 when she met Jimmie Wilson, a job entry and retention support specialist with the Strategic Initiative for Transformational Employment (SITE). An initiative of Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program (EKCEP), SITE works to bridge the gulf between recovery and productive participation in the workforce by providing individuals with valuable career services while actively cultivating second-chance job opportunities.
At the time Johnson began working with SITE, it was apparent that the support Wilson offered wasn’t just a token effort. Johnson says Wilson didn’t treat her like a number, or that she just needed to work her case and get to the next one.
“As soon as I met Jimmie, I don’t know what it was, but she knows how to sit you down and make you feel comfortable,” Johnson says. “She wasn’t judging the things I did. All she was worried about was helping me get to my future, and she just made it easy.”
SITE helped cover the cost for Johnson to complete peer support training and enter the recovery field as a peer support specialist. It was something she knew well before then that she would want to do someday, to use her own experiences to help others.
“I know how it feels, and I know the struggle people go through, and I know how hard it is for people to come out of that struggle,” Johnson says.
Wilson was also able to provide Johnson with funding to cover the cost for transportation from her home in Pikeville to Hazard so that she could attend the training sessions. With that support, Johnson obtained her certification and eventually applied for a position with Appalachian Community Care (ACC), and with Wilson accompanying her to the interview for encouragement, she knew the interview went well.
Obtaining her certification was the first sort of credential Johnson had ever earned, and that was a big accomplishment for her. But landing a job where she’d be able to earn a living while helping others was something she felt was meant to be, and something she says that may not have happened without the assistance of SITE and Wilson’s dedication to her own job.
“I can’t put a price on that, I can’t explain how important that is, because when you come out of addiction, you have nobody,” Johnson says. “Jimmie and that program really helped me and put in the time and the effort to actually look at me like a person and not just a number.”
Fast forward to March 2022, and having moved on from her position with ACC Johnson is now actually working alongside Wilson as an IPS Supported Employment Specialists with SITE, covering Pike County. A position she began in early 2022, Johnson assists people in recovery land jobs and maintain them, something she says that was integral in her own path to sobriety.
“If you have that steady routine every day, and you’re happy with the job you’re doing, you don’t have time to think about temptation,” she says.
While she’s maintaining a steady professional life, Johnson says she was also able to mend other aspects of her life. The girlfriend who six years prior made her realize the changes she needed to make is now her wife, and together they’re building a life without the barrier of addiction. And speaking of building, Johnson has also rebuilt many of those bridges with her family.
“The first time I knew when my family was really noticing [my progress] was when I could go to my grandma’s house and she didn’t hide her purse, and she trusted me and knew I wasn’t going to take from her anymore,” Johnson says. “To put it into perspective, five to six years ago I was in the head of a hollow with a needle in my arm. Now, I own two cars, my own home, I’m married, and 99 percent of my family are speaking to me now and trust me. They know that I will not do anything to harm them or the progress I’ve made.
To learn more about the services available through SITE, and how they may be able to assist you or someone you know, visit www.ekcep.org/site.
EKCEP, a nonprofit workforce development agency headquartered in Hazard, Ky., serves the citizens of 23 Appalachian coalfield counties. The agency provides an array of workforce development services and operates the Kentucky Career Center JobSight network of workforce centers, which provide access to more than a dozen state and federal programs that offer employment and training assistance for jobseekers and employers all under one roof. Learn more about us at http://www.ekcep.org, http://www.jobsight.org and http://www.facebook.com/ekcep.
